In this study of lesbian sadomasochism, Lynda Hart focuses on the ways in which sadomasochistic sexual practices have been engaged by critics and theorists. She notes how, for two decades, this much-reviled area of sexuality has emerged as a Rorschach test for diverse communities - radical feminists, mainstream feminists, and the New Right - that are struggling to come to grips with their own sexual anxieties.

Roof's ambitious, wide-ranging book links narrative theory, theories of sexuality, and gay and lesbian theory to explore the place of homosexuality, and specifically the lesbian, in the tradition of western narrative. According to Freud, perversions are the necessary obstacles in a heroic plot of normal heterosexual development; and homosexuality is the nineteenth century's classic case of perversion. Roof builds on Freud to illustrate that a structural understanding of narrative enforces a heterosexual paradigm, a sense of meaning that provides psychological stability for the reader. Looking...